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Thursday, June 04, 2015

CIVIL RIGHTS GROUPS DISAGREE ON NEED+EFFECTIVENESS OF ANNUAL TESTING: "I can't point to any meaningful progress in academic excellence or equity."

From Politico Morning
Ed:CIVIL RIGHTS ADVOCATES DIVERGE ON
TESTING [http://politi.co/1JtEpH8] 6/4/15::As Capitol Hill slowly ramps
up for more debates on testing and accountability in No Child Left Behind, a
handful of civil rights advocates are going their own way: Leaders from the
Advancement Project and the Schott Foundation for Public Education penned an
op-ed [follows ] in The Hill
explaining why they think groups like the National Council of La Raza and the
NAACP have it wrong when they say preserving annual testing and a strong
accountability system are crucial.

Schott Foundation President John Jackson told Morning
Education he thinks the current system has been given a chance to work.
"These tests have been linked to limiting curricula and creating a
high-stakes environment," Jackson said. "I can't point to any meaningful
progress in academic excellence or equity."

And civil rights groups in Washington should be listening
to more to students and parents on the ground when they're building their
policy platforms, Jackson added, because many local groups feel the same way.
The foundation has also donated to groups who oppose annual testing, such as
FairTest, according to tax filings.

Commentary by Judith Browne Dianis, John H. Jackson and
Pedro Noguera in The Hill | http://bit.ly/1FuTdj9

June 02, 2015, 01:00 pm::In recent weeks, a few
national civil rights organizations including the National Council of La Raza,
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the League of
United Latin American Citizens and National Urban League have vocally opposed
efforts to highlight the dangers of high stakes testing by students and parents
opting out of annual assessments. Uniting under the banner of the Washington,
D.C.-based Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, these groups are
urging parents to comply with annual testing requirements. We strongly disagree
with their position.

Data from these annual assessments are not a reasonable
proxy for educational opportunity, and even more, educational equity. African
American and Latino students are more likely to be suspended, expelled or
pushed-out of school regardless of their performance on the test; and despite
some improvement in graduation rates, significant disparities remain.

Moreover, of all the topics that could be addressed as No
Child Left Behind (NCLB) is considered for reauthorization, why defend a policy
that has proven ineffective in advancing the educational interest of children
of color and disadvantaged children generally? Schools serving poor children
and children of color remain under-funded and have been labeled
"failing" while little has been done at the local, state or federal
level to effectively intervene and provide support. In the face of clear
evidence that children of color are more likely to be subjected to over-testing
and a narrowing of curriculum in the name of test preparation, it is perplexing
that D.C. based civil rights groups are promoting annual tests.

Why should wealthy parents be able to opt-out of the
over-testing by sending their children to private schools while disadvantaged
students are forced to exist in a high stakes, over-tested climate for the sake
of producing data that confirms what they already know---their schools lack the
needed supports?

We are not opposed to assessment. Standards and
assessments are important for diagnostic purposes. However, too often the data
produced by standardized tests are not made available to teachers until after
the school year is over, making it impossible to use the information to address
student needs. When tests are used in this way, they do little more than
measure predictable inequities in academic outcomes. Parents have a right to
know that there is concrete evidence that their children are learning, but standardized
tests do not provide this evidence

While high performing countries, wealthy parents and
educational experts are calling for more student-centered and deeper learning
experiences for their students, LCCR and others are asking communities to continue
the practice of subjecting students to tests that have failed to deliver very
little in the way of excellence or equity.Parents have a right to demand enriched curricula that includes the
arts, civics and lab sciences.The
parents who are opting out have a right to do so, and they certainly have a
right to demand that their children receive more than test preparation classes
that leave them bored and less engaged

We should all remember that NCLB was originally enacted
in 1965 as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), as part of
President Lyndon B. Johnson's war on poverty.The measure was designed to compensate for disadvantages in learning
opportunities between low-income and middle-class children. While it was never
adequately funded, ESEA was envisioned as an "anti-poverty"
bill.

We now know students cannot be tested out of poverty, and
while NCLB did take us a step forward by requiring schools to produce evidence
that students were learning, it took us several steps backward when that
evidence was reduced to how well a student performed on a standardized
test.Most states have long realized
that the goals set by NCLB - such as 100-percent proficiency in reading and
math by 2014 - could not be achieved.In
2013, the US Department of Education wisely began to allow states to opt out of
meeting this unattainable requirement. Why not give parents the right to opt
out of tests when they realize states have not done the work of guaranteeing
their children are being adequately prepared?

The civil rights movement has always worked to change
unjust policies. When 16-year-old Barbara Johns organized a student strike in
Prince Edward County, Virginia in 1951 leading to Brown v. Board in 1954, she
opted out of public school segregation. When Rosa Parks sat down on a bus in
Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 she opted out of the system of segregation in
public transportation. And as youth and their allies protest throughout the
country against police brutality, declaring that "Black Lives Matter,"
we are reminded that the struggle for justice often forces us to challenge the
status quo, even when those fighting to maintain it happen to be elected
officials or, in this case, members of the civil rights establishment.

Browne Dianis is co-director of the national
racial justice organization Advancement Project.

Jackson is president and CEO of the Schott
Foundation for Public Education.

Noguera is the Peter L. Agnew Professor of
Education at New York University.